| According to Dwyer's March 26, 2007 article, the New York City police department's R.N.C. Intelligence Squad conducted undercover activities for a year before the Republican National Convention held in that city in 2004. Agents filed daily reports on "street theatre companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies." Federal judges gave the go ahead to the NYPD in 2003 to "investigate political organizations for criminal activities." Most important, this group, according to the police reports, raises "funds for expansion and support of anti-R.N.C. activist organizations." Terrible! Another group planning an event for the celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday in 2004 received a R.N.C. report that referred to their "protest against the R.N.C., the war in Iraq and the Bush administration." Activist and co-founder of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale, advocates for self-defense through grassroots organizing of disadvantaged youths. In the late 1960;s and early 1970s, Seale was a target of COINTELPRO, a FBI spy program that worked from an "unexpressed" premise: the law enforcement agency has "the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order." Last month, I attended Seale's lecture in Madison, Wisconsin at Edgewood College where he addressed mostly young black high school and college students. He reminded these young people that he and other first Black Panthers were "college students" and "avid readers." He had "two years of law school before forming the Party," Seale told the audience. "We were about change, the continuous democratic process" of "raising consciousness, community empowerment," and "defending ourselves." I looked at the young black people in the audience and remembered how I learned grassroots activism from trailblazers. It was my "education," my inheritance as resistance to injustice is a right of any human being who is subjected to oppressive tactics. I was one of the youth recruited by Operation Breadbasket when I was a teenager in 1969. Most of us young people were familiar with the Black Panther community programs and their newspaper. I hoped those young people in the audience understood that the conditions of oppression was not acceptable no matter the high-tech forces employed to shove them further down, hovering in fear. In a follow up phone interview, Seale admitted that those in the struggle were "up against a wall." Legislation and policies "to deal with domestic programs," he said, are absent during this current administration. Grassroots programs, however, benefit the young forgotten by the Bush administration and politicians alike. His work with college students at Temple University and students in Denver, Colorado produced sustainable college courses that will connect students to community issues and community activism. And there is more! Seale's youth programs for high school students in inner cities empowers young people challenge despair and hopelessness. One Philadelphia initiative involves some 50 students in jobs program who learn skills in renovating housing for the poor. Groups of six to seven young people learn the skills to build porch decks, create dry wall, and paint walls. A mentoring program brings together these high school students with other programs focusing on engineering and environmental issues. In Oakland, California, the Eastside Arts Alliance, after three years of empowering young people, celebrated the opening of a new building to accommodate 100 young people who will create "their own documentaries" under the tutelage of professional filmmakers. Along with teaching these youth to document the black experience in inner cities, the Eastside Arts Alliance will also provide them and other youth with a place to "dance, rap, and meet." Ultimately the work of this center is to "evolve entrepreneurship for the young people," Seale said. But it will also "raise funds for environmental youth programs." As a result, one program at the Eastside Arts Alliance will wed environmental issues with the creative (artistic) insights of these young people, some who will be fortunate to acquire skills in manufacturing, producing, and installing solar panels. The Eastside Arts Alliance project is a "conscious raising," Seale explained, to "unify the people through culture and the arts." These young people learn that they are culturally linked to others and share with others human, creative potential for change. These programs are examples, said Seale, of "tangible, practical, and progressive programs that make human sense." Ultimately, Seale wants these programs to stand "as shining examples of what the politicians are not doing." In Ottawa, Canada last month, the Canadian government refused entry to Bobby Seale. He was to deliver the keynote address to students at the University of Ottawa, according to Can West News Service writer, Maria Kubacki, on "racism and oppression." Politicians and law enforcement agencies must recognize in Seale's youth programs a threat to the ordering of subjugation. But Seale is still going forward. He needs more of us standing up and resisting alongside him -- high-tech spying or not. |
| Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels Bobby Seale |
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